Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [146]
"It's not native. It came with us. I saw it attached to the hull."
"To the hull? It survived raw space? And entry heat? And the pressure of this water? It can't be."
"No?"
"No," the Lobster said. "Because if it was real, I couldn't bear not to be it."
"It's showing itself," Vera exulted. "Because of where we are! You see?
You see?" She laughed. "It's dancing!"
The thing floated smoothly above one of the smoking chimneys, flattening itself to bathe in the searing updraft of unthinkable pressure and heat. Hot bubbles seethed beneath it, sliding with frictionless ease off its mirrored undersur-face. As they watched, it drew itself together into a rippling globe. Then, liquescing with sudden speed, it poured itself through a thumb-sized crevice into the core of the heat vent. It vanished at once.
"I didn't see that," the Lobster insisted. "I didn't see it vanish into the bowels of the Earth. Should we leave now? I mean, maybe we should try to get away from it."
"No," Vera said.
"You're right," Pilot quavered. "That might make it mad." Vera marveled. "Did you see it? It was enjoying this! Even it knows. It knows this is Paradise!" She was trembling. "Abelard, someday, in Europa, this will all be ours, we can touch it, feel it, breathe the water, smell it, taste it! I want it! I want to be out there, like the Presence is...." She was breathing hard, her face radiant. "Abelard ... if it weren't for you I'd have never known this.... Thank you. Thank you, too, Pilot."
"Right, yes, surely," Pilot fluted uneasily. "Lindsay, the drone. Should you bring it in?"
Lindsay smiled. "Don't be afraid, Pilot. It's done you a favor. You've seen the potential. Now you'll have something to aim for."
"But think of the power it must have. It's like a god. ..."
"Then it's in good company, with us."
Lindsay guided the drone into the specimen hold and unloaded the genetic capsules into their pressure racks. He reloaded its arms and returned to work. The Presence emerged, ballooning suddenly from a second chimney, beside the drone. It drifted toward him, watching. He waved a claw, but it made no response and soon drifted out of the drone's lights into darkness and invisibility.
The creatures showed no fear of the drone. Vera took over, gently parting the supple stems of the tubeworms to harvest everything she could find. The drone walked the length of the valley oasis, probing the ooze, prying into crevices.
They had a stroke of luck where a new hot spring had broken open, parboiling a colony of creatures clustered above it on an overhang. They used the dead as bait to attract scavengers; they opened them to sample gut bacteria and the agents of decay.
Their sample could not be complete; the oasis was far too rich for that. But their success was still entire. No creature born to the seas of Earth could live, unaltered, in Europa's alien waters. That was the task of Europa's angels, the Lifesiders, who would inherit this genetic treasure, tease it apart, and rebuild new creatures for the new conditions. The living beings here would be models, archetypes in a new Creation, where art and purpose would take the place of a billion years of evolution.
As they packed the robot away for the last time and lifted ship, they saw no sign of the Presence. But Lindsay had no doubt that it was with them. He was tired as they ascended slowly toward the surface. More than his Shaper favorite or the armored Mechanist, he felt the burden of his hubris heavy on him. Who was he to have done these things? The light had drawn him, and he had grown toward it as a tree might grow, spreading blind leaves toward an unknown radiance. Now he had come to his life's fruition, and he was glad of it. But a tree dies when its roots are cut, and Lindsay knew his roots were his humanity. He was a thing of flesh and blood, of life and death, not an Immanent Will.
A tree drew strength from light, but it was not light itself. And life was a process of changing, but